Re: XMLSERVICE

Hi Richard,

To me RESTful is anything where I can pass a formatted URL with parms
of some sort and get data back in XML, JSON or whatever format I
desire.

I see what you're saying. I think what happens is some instructor, trying to extol the benefits of REST, says something like:

RESTful simplifies, because you don't have to create a complex document, you can just do this:

GET http://example.com/inventory/AF21C

And then the learner says something like "what about if I did something like this? would that be restful?"

GET http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C

And the instructor might say... "ummm, sure, I guess so. As long as you still identify the object the URL, and still use GET, POST, PUT, DELETE as the verb."

GET http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C
PUT http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C
POST http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C
DELETE http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C

And then the learner might say "but, my software only supports GET/POST because that's all that was in common use on the web for ages... so can I do rest, then?"

And the instructor says "well, people work around this by adding by adding the verb to the URL, so you could have"

GET http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C
POST http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C&verb=ADDTO
POST http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C&verb=REPLACE
POST http://example.com/inventory.pgm?loc=AF21C&verb=DELETE

This is technically not REST, it's a workaround due to software limitations. But it's "close enough", right?

And now you, Richard, are saying that it's just one more small deviation of naming the program and parameters in an XML document is okay, and it's still REST.

GET http://example.com/cgi-bin/xmlcgi.pgm?db2=*LOCAL&uid=scott&pwd=pasword&ipc=/tmp/inventory&ctl=*sbmjob&xmlin=<...xmlfile with program definitions, parameters, return types, etc....>

I mean... at what point does it cease being "close enough" to RESTful?